Has a College Education Ceased to Provide a Reasonable ROI?

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 16:30 EDT - Forbes.com - Top Stories

Colleges are a bit like funeral homes. Talking about getting your money's worth strikes some as a little crass. But overcharging people is crass, too. College demands an increasingly big chunk of change, and the returns aren't necessarily there. Writing recently in The Journal, Jack Hough lined up a number of experts to dispute a ...

What Colleges Have the Highest Tuition? How To Save $244,000 On Your Education; Avoid the College Debt-Trap
The data is a bit out of date, but the US Department of Education has a College Affordability and Transparency Center where you can see the highest and lowest tuition and net tuition (including aid) of various types of two and four-year colleges.
The highest costs are over $60,000 per year. And that is just tuition and books, not just room and board.

The data is a bit out of date, but the US Department of Education has a College Affordability and Transparency Center where you can see the highest and lowest tuition and net tuition (including aid) of various types of two and four-year colleges.
The highest costs are over $60,000 per year. And that is just tuition and books, not just room and board.

Should some college-bound students opt for a two-year degree at a technical school? Will an education give you a better life? Money Talking digs into the tough questions in the debate over the high cost of higher education and the mounting student debt that’s one of its byproducts. The central question: Is college worth it?

Should some college-bound students opt for a two-year degree at a technical school? Will an education give you a better life? Money Talking digs into the tough questions in the debate over the high cost of higher education and the mounting student debt that’s one of its byproducts. The central question: Is college worth it?

President Barack Obama called for linking financial aid to college affordability when he addressed Congress last month, but even as costs keep rising, some experts say not to expect crucial changes this year.
Reforming how financial aid is distributed – with incentives to keep tuition down – probably won’t come until after Congress tackles equally thorny changes in primary and secondary school education, known as K-12 in the U.S.

By James Kwak
Probably the most important and intractable economic problem we face is not restarting the economy after the financial crisis, but the decades-old problem of stagnant wages for the lower and middle classes and the consequent massive increase in income inequality. This is something that Raghuram Rajan brings up in the first chapter of Fault Lines, and, like many people, he points the finger at education. Citing (like everyone else) Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, he writes (pp. 22-23),

It was reported in the media as showing that, controlling for all the right variables, going to an elite college or university as an undergraduate doesn't really matter for your future prospects or income. But Robin Hanson, with money on the line, investigated further. After reading the relevant pieces closely, he reports [what follows is Robin, not me, but with the multiple indentations I haven't indented everything again]: